


Her Arm

by LoveKillsXO



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Biting, Bloodplay, Canon-Typical Snarky One-Liners, Choking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Vulnerability, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Healing Together from Traumatic Childhoods, Light profanity, Post-Coital Cuddling, unlikely friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:07:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28745925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveKillsXO/pseuds/LoveKillsXO
Summary: One night, circa chapters 27 & 29 of HtN, a very tired Harrow lets the facade slip for only a mere moment, but it's enough of an opening for Ianthe to... accidentally start an awkward, oddly heartfelt conversation that magnetically draws them into physical intimacy? Huh, didn't see that one coming.---Drifting in and out of sleep on her side, Harrow blearily noted that a cold hand had perched gently against her back and was rubbing her scapulae in reassuring circles. Her hazy concern turned to hazier alarm when another, warmer hand bluntly pressed its mass to her neck, then another to her waist, and yet another all the way down by her foot, and now she was startled fully awake, crying out in fearful confusion as she sat bolt upright and realized-"Ugh. Ianthe, you're insufferable."The recipient of the barb giggled with delight and sat up with a complete lack of urgency, withdrawing her right arm and dismissing the floating pack of hand-shaped masses of fatty tissue into a hot, viscous vapor - typical Third nonsense."No need to frown, Harry. You can just admit it was funny."
Relationships: Harrow/Ianthe/hot bone-metal arm, Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	Her Arm

Drifting in and out of sleep on her side, Harrow blearily noted that a cold hand had perched gently against her back and was rubbing her scapulae in reassuring circles. Her hazy concern turned to hazier alarm when another, warmer hand bluntly pressed its mass to her neck, then another to her waist, and yet another all the way down by her foot, and now she was startled fully awake, crying out in fearful confusion as she sat bolt upright and realized-

"Ugh. Ianthe, you're insufferable."

The recipient of the barb giggled with delight and sat up with a complete lack of urgency, withdrawing her right arm and dismissing the floating pack of hand-shaped masses of fatty tissue into a hot, viscous vapor - typical Third nonsense.

"No need to frown, Harry. You can just admit it was funny."

Harrow's eyes narrowed with practiced violence, and her body tightened into its traditional, unpleasant posture.

"I would rather have my bones extracted through a single toe, one by one. I would rather have my fingers peeled and eaten." And in a rare departure from comparisons to physical mutilation, "I would rather _continue being called Harry._ "

Ianthe's eyebrows raised a tad as she caustically enthused, "Oh, so you _do_ like 'Harry,'" but Harrow wasn't listening. Instead, she eyed the lyctor's right arm, whose chilly form had rested on her back mere moments before. It was her own creation of living bone - cardinal joy of the profoundly joyless Ninth House! - albeit gilded hideously by the Saint of Patience. Still, gazing at its smooth humerus, the elegantly matched radius and ulna, the satisfying articulation of the phalanges - more perfect than any pure construct’s arm could ever be - Harrow couldn't deny the appeal of its aesthetic honesty, metal topcoat aside. After all, bone neither hides nor lies as flesh is wont to do.

Harrow uncomfortably remembered how much of her was, indeed, flesh.

"Harry, are you even listening anymore?"

Slowly looking back to Ianthe's bored, restless expression, the exhausted scion of the Ninth once again reluctantly considered her nightmare roommate's understated beauty. The deathly pallor of her skin was matched by the snowy teal veins lying underneath and the pale violet of her eyes, and she nearly shone with a quiet liveliness. Harrow, nerves exquisitely frayed by the attempts on her life and the aftermath of soupgate, was feeling her steel trap of a mind corrode with each passing night she spent sharing a bed with the Princess of Ida. After all, despite the hideous mass of Valancy's golden lace nightgown draped over her svelte frame, she was a sight to behold.

But now the sight beheld her, in turn.

Voice dancing with a soft lilt, not unlike a needle softly dancing its way into one's eye, Ianthe crooned, "Harrow darling, are you _admiring_ me?" The younger girl flinched, regret setting in as she realized how her customary stoic veneer had flickered for the briefest moment. Unfortunately, as they both knew all too well, Ianthe was precisely the sort of manipulative little bitch who could split a mountain from even the most minuscule crack.

"Hold your tongue, you tremendous buffoon."

"Reverend Daughter, your honeyed words have plied my heart. Where would you like my tongue held?"

Harrow held her gaze, bristling despite a rational inclination to remain calm. Ianthe had goaded her with an economical efficacy - presumably out of sport, for her idle amusement - and Harrow needed to restore the modest reserve of dignity that her time on the Mithraeum hadn't already evaporated. Intending to call upon the Tomb and all the ominous mystique of the Ninth, she addressed her threat by gravely uttering, "Tridentarius."

Except it wasn't grave at all. Her voice cracked humiliatingly, and she froze.

They looked at one another for a long moment, and Ianthe's face shifted into an expression that Harrow couldn't parse. Was it sheer pity? A certain predatory playfulness? Or perhaps something warmer? Whatever the case, Harrow had to break the silence.

"I don't trust you."

"Well, yeah, you shouldn't," came the reply, its tone familiarly unkind. And then, more sincerely, a gambit presented without the usual Third pretense, "But I'm not going to hurt you tonight."

As Harrow's mind momentarily turned to a blank void, Ianthe the First, Eighth Saint to serve the King Undying, reached out her sculpture of an arm and brushed its icy fingers along Harrow's cheek with a surprising softness, settling there. The grim nun in front of her didn't show any emotion, but neither did she recoil. The pair returned to stillness, as if stuttering through an interaction neither of them had planned on.

As her pituitary gland kicked into overdrive in response to those frozen digits on her cheek and the blistering heat of the words she could hardly believe had just been uttered, Harrow - blood coursing with jolts of epinephrine, sternum rigid, palms slick with cold sweat - was yet again confronted with the terrifying notion of just how much of her was flesh. Vulnerable flesh. Untrustworthy flesh. Flesh that turned her to prey around a leech like Ianthe. Flesh which cannot stand on its own like her beloved, perfect bone.

With a colossal effort, she met Ianthe's suddenly serious gaze and let out a strangled, "Tridentarius, what are you doing?"

Even dazed as she was, Harrow could see that Ianthe feigned calm as she smiled thinly and replied with the jovial, "Oh Nonagesimus, even the most ancient, decrepit black vestal of your miserable Ninth congregation would know precisely what I'm doing."

Harrow found herself watching with a detachment veering toward dissociation as the cold arm carefully tilted her chin up just a tad, and Ianthe - unwinding herself like a coil - deliberately leaned in and pressed her lips to Harrow's.

The first instinct was a dissonant pang of guilt that the Body might be watching, that this might be a betrayal of her entombed love. This was quickly followed by a myriad of concerns, spanning everything from God awkwardly walking in, to the Saint of Duty choosing tonight to strike again, to the simple fact that she didn't know what the hell she was doing.

The Ninth hadn't exactly offered ample romantic choice - anyone remotely in her age group was a teeny bit deceased from the sacrificial ritual to _make_ her. If forced to be honest with herself though, she would admit that scarcity to be irrelevant. Even granted the possibility of intimacy in her life, Harrow would never have been able to take it. What gave her the right to accept someone's touch on a body formed by unholy sin, to accept affection for a mind bolstered by grim sacrifice? If they knew how she was blighted in the eyes of God, who would be so depraved as to offer her those comforts?

With that last thought, Harrow snapped back to reality just in time to realize that Ianthe had pulled away with her brow furrowed in concern, an expression that made more sense once she realized that there were hot tears on her own cheeks - she had started to cry, without a sound. "Ianthe, you don't know," she mumbled almost incoherently, "My parents, they- I'm not-"

"Harrow, I'm not an idiot. I know what they did," came the sober reply. Ianthe had rolled her eyes with the words, but not in an altogether unkind way.

Black paint gradually congealing into a mess under her eyes, Harrow could only look stunned and burble a weak, "How?"

A quiet scoff. "Your memory fails you, Ninth. I told you all at Canaan House that I'm an expert in large-scale energy transferral. Resurrection theory. And then I saw the way you lost it our first time in the River, coming to the Mithraeum." The slender wraith gestured around to the station with her free hand - the right had slid from Harrow's cheek down to her shoulder, bracing her - as if the crying girl might have forgotten where they were. Ianthe's eyes returned to hers, their unabashed curiosity belying a certain tenderness. "So that's what makes you wince when anyone so much as bumps your shoulder, huh. Honestly, I was expecting more," - at least she didn't know about the incursion into the Tomb - "but it's nonetheless quite impressive how much of a mess your head is, Nonagesimus."

Before Harrow could reply, Ianthe's left arm reached down to grab her right and softly bring it up to her chest, holding it tight. It might have been scandalous if Harrow didn't already feel utterly naked and bereft of any further sense of shame. Those amethyst eyes glowed now, and the mouth beneath them spoke with purpose and conviction, even as the rest of her face suggested that she, too, was wondering how they had gotten to this point. "Let go of it, Harrow. Your family's sins are not your own. All any of us can do is adapt to the shit circumstances foisted upon us at birth." The hand on her cheek tightened its grip almost imperceptibly, and the words that followed seemed to be as much an entreaty to Harrow as a personal mantra.

"You can wallow in it, or you can just live."

Harrow was hardly out of her stupefied misery, but this impromptu speech had created a single point of light in the depths of her mind, something she could grab hold of for clarity. Ianthe had come into focus, a kindred spirit in the unlikeliest of places.

Hesitating, Harrow unclasped their hands and delicately slipped her fingers along the nape of that slender neck and up into her hair - to which Ianthe let out a weak sigh, one as Harrow had never heard - then pulled the taller girl into another kiss. Instead of sinking like a stone into her own psyche once more, the Reverend Daughter found herself subsumed into the startling softness of Ianthe's lips, the heat of her slight frame, the intoxicating scent of sweet musk radiating from her like thanergy.

She thought of how they were bonded by an oath arranged by a prior Harrow, simultaneously mortal adversaries and reluctant friends. Right now though, they were something different entirely. Their power dynamic was a dizzying mess, something that only grew more convoluted as you attempted to untangle it, but Harrow didn't care. She wanted this - had wanted something like it for a very long time indeed - and moreover she wanted the luxury of giving in to that feeling.

Almost entirely pressed up against one another, kissing between breathless gasps with something approaching ferocity, she felt Ianthe's hand, _that_ hand, start its circuitous route down from her cheek. It slid to her back, tracing each vertebra with exquisite detail on its way down - Harrow couldn't believe the way she shivered at that sensation, but embarrassment was merely a faint memory - wrapping around to her ribcage and squeezing there with pleasingly dull pain. Then it crawled upward, making that modest journey to somewhere softer, but paused suddenly.

Harrow's eyes opened to see those stark violet irises locked to hers, and she was both bemused and caught off-guard to realize that the expression on Ianthe's face was beseeching, a wordless request for permission. There was only one thing to say, and she delivered it with breathy delight.

"You're a filthy animaphiliac, Tridentarius."

She didn't have much time to reflect on the easy joy it brought her to see the filthy animaphiliac’s eyes alight with surprise and mouth smirk in reply, as clothes swiftly started coming off the both of them. The whole thing was absurd, really, a strange dream suddenly imbued with lightness of being. It all washed over her with a welcome cacophony of sensory newness - her hands gliding across waist and stomach and wet thigh, the faint scent of sweat intermingled with a far more intimate one, both of them a mess of feral yelps and harried breathing.

And then Harrow was tipping over onto the bed - or had Ianthe pushed her? - ending up back in the same arrangement where they'd started the evening, admittedly with an altogether different tenor. Before she could turn back to face her again, Ianthe had closed what little distance there was, natural arm extended under Harrow's head like a tiny pillow and wrapping around her front to grab the right shoulder, while the construct arm wrapped around her waist - a straitjacket hug, just about, but devoid of any ill intent. She felt Ianthe's long blonde locks brushing along her exposed back and cheek as the whisper came directly into her ear.

"Harrow."

It was the chord of desperation in that single word that sent goosebumps along Harrow's bare body, the staggering awe of witnessing Ianthe's composure melt this way over her, despite everything.

The amalgam of bone and metal started drifting downward, making it just past the hip before Harrow reflexively grabbed it. They both froze for a beat, and Harrow - flustered but still giving her mind time to calculate this important choice of words - demurred, "No weird flesh magic."

She could feel Ianthe smile against the back of her head with all the tentative confidence of her 22 years, hot breath tickling Harrow’s ear as the verbal parry came. "I'll save the weird flesh magic for next time, then."

Harrow clicked her tongue in what was largely performative annoyance but couldn't stifle the amused little laugh that followed. With a single deep breath, she let go of the icy wrist and let it finish its arc.

Her world was immediately flooded with electric, pulsing color, like feeling a chromatic bomb going off inside her. Or maybe she was the explosion, each second an incendiary eternity of sensation. She wasn't sure how long it took her to notice the sounds escaping her mouth, or their ecstatic urgency, but there was no delay in noticing Ianthe's other hand depart her shoulder and travel down to her neck, squeezing with considerable force and a strange tenderness behind it.

Ianthe’s voice came as a lovingly mocking whisper. “There’s so much more to people than bone, Harry.”

Neither hand would relent, and Harrow found herself buffeted by taller and taller waves, awareness of the room around her starting to fade out of existence, an ocean dousing what felt like every last nerve ending in her nervous system. Then everything roared back into view as her neck was freed, and she gasped for air with equal parts physical need and odd disappointment that the sensation had stopped. Even as Ianthe’s sculpted arm continued to send surges through her, she knew she was close (to... something?), and blinding inspiration struck her.

In one fluid motion, the Reverend Daughter bowed her chin, scooped two of Ianthe's fingers into her mouth, and bit down hard, tasting the hot rush of her blood right away. Ianthe screamed in genuine pain - Harrow couldn't really blame her - but to her immense credit didn't miss a beat or pull away. Instead, she returned the surprise by unflinchingly pushing her bloodied fingers _deeper_ into Harrow’s mouth, letting her fellow lyctor feel her incisors cut a jagged line through all those fragile little capillaries.

Her taste was so utterly overwhelming now, an ambrosia of iron and salt and sickly sweetness. She was in all of Harrow's senses, consumed in a way that would make the lyctorship ritual itself blush, a scorching feast of Ianthe lighting up every bit of Harrow's being. Face paint thoroughly sweated off, whole body entangled in Ianthe's, voice now an inaudible whine as the moment approached, Harrow felt herself leave the waves and shoot upward, the ocean now distant beneath her feet as she soared into the sky and lost herself entirely in the throes of that singular release.

\---

“I thought you were trying to rip those fingers off of my _good_ hand just so you could make me another weird, boney prosthesis.”

Harrow chuckled. Having eventually caught their breath, the pair now lay unmoving, still nestled together. But as soon as she laughed, Harrow felt the surprising urge to cry with an emotion not altogether unlike catharsis, and she resisted. Or at least, she resisted until she couldn’t, at which point the small sobs came easily and shook her whole body, devoid of its usual rigid demeanor. Ianthe said nothing, and simply kept her arms wrapped around with gentle pressure, their bodies close enough to feel one another’s heartbeat. As Harrow’s tears subsided, the two girls lay there with divine stillness, as if a volcanic eruption had overtaken them and enshrined this moment in ash.

In the lonely reaches of outer space, Harrowhark fell asleep without struggle for what felt like the first time, still wrapped in Ianthe’s embrace. She dreamed of the view up from Drearburh into the atmosphere so high above, of the uncertain and quiet promise of those stars, of a great rock peacefully rolling aside and troubling her no more.


End file.
